


Beautifully and Wonderfully Made

by calluna_cuprea



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Feels, Gen, Or not, Pining, all the feels, boobs, oh the humanity, that's the problem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-03
Updated: 2020-02-03
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22546294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calluna_cuprea/pseuds/calluna_cuprea
Summary: Nanny Ashtoreth visits Brother Francis's groundskeeper's cottage for tea and strategizing one evening. Feels ensue (and whiskey ensues, though not in that order).
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Nanny Ashtoreth & Aziraphale (Good Omens)
Kudos: 34





	Beautifully and Wonderfully Made

Sometimes, after little Warlock had been tucked into bed and sung a hellish lullaby, Nanny Ashtoreth would gently shut his door and make her way down the hall, past her own bedroom next door, down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the side door, and across the lawn to the groundskeeper’s cottage occupied by Brother Francis. She would knock twice, her knuckles sharp against the ancient wood, then step back with her hands clasped in front of her.

When she came like this in the evening, when her time was her own, she didn’t wear a hat or gloves. However, her hair was still pinned up in careful auburn curls, her blouse was buttoned all the way up to the throat, the little bow tie in place and perfect, heeled shoes laced tightly. No matter what the era or corporeal form, she always favored the very finest fabrics, sharp lines, a perfect tailored fit.

Then the door opened, and it was not Brother Francis who answered; it was Aziraphale. His coat was the same one he’d worn for over a century and a half, his tartan tie was just as perfect as her bow, and his teeth were a reasonable size. “Evening,” he said tonight with a tight smile, and he stepped back to allow her in.

“Good evening,” she replied in her prim voice, stepping inside. The door closed behind her and she clicked her way across the wood floor to the sofa where she sat neatly at one end, ankles crossed.

“I still don’t know why you insist on retaining that shape after hours,” said Aziraphale as he went to the stove. The kettle was already full of water from the leaky tap of the nearby sink, and he had no sooner set it on the burner than it whistled. “It’s been nearly two years.”

“Think of it as method acting,” said Ashtoreth. It was interesting, really, keeping this female form day and night, month after month. It had been several centuries since she’d presented as a woman in this plane for any amount of time, and so many things had changed since then for womankind. (Sadly, many things had not.) There were simpler undergarments these days, and a large array of cosmetics. To say nothing of things like voting rights, owning property, and, should a lady so desire, wearing trousers. 

“Well, you’re certainly committed, I’ll give you that,” Aziraphale said. He poured the boiling water into a teapot that used to be white and now was the color of old bone. All the accoutrements here had come with the cabin from which the previous groundskeeper had retired not quite two years ago, coincidentally (ha) exactly the same time as young Warlock outgrew his nurse (walking, talking, fully toilet-trained) and needed a nanny. There were shelves on the wall above a small counter space next to the sink, and he got down the tin of tea and another tin of biscuits to arrange on a plate.

“As you are not,” Ashtoreth returned, lifting her chin a few more degrees. “Why do you not remain in the form of Brother Francis even when the Dowlings aren’t near?” 

The “ow” of the family’s name had a lovely Scottish sharpness to it when she spoke, something Aziraphale was still getting used to. “Have you seen him, my dear b--girl? Sorry. I’m so used to--” Ashtoreth dismissed his slip-up with a wave of a long-fingered hand, her expression serene behind the little round spectacles. “Anyway, I couldn’t do it. I’m rather attached to this corporeal form. I’ve had it for quite a long time,” he said with some pride in his voice. But Pride was a sin, so he banished his smile.

“You never feel the urge to try something new?” asked Ashtoreth. She had raised her hands up to rub little circles over her temples with two fingertips, and her eyes were closed.

“Not in that capacity, no,” said Aziraphale. “I’m quite full up with ‘new’ just now. This cottage, the gardening, interacting with a child.” He finished getting the tea things ready and turned with the tray in his hands to see her rubbing her head. “Are you feeling all right, my dear?” he asked, concern suddenly evident in his voice as he set the tray on the low table before the sofa.

“Oh, yes,” Ashtoreth replied. “The little hellspawn was just particularly stubborn today, damn him.” Aziraphale knew she meant it as an endearment from the way she canted her head a little to one side and the corners of her lips curved ever so slightly up. “And human bodies react to stress by tensing up, you know. Neck and shoulders and so on up. Warlock asks so many questions, but if he doesn’t get the answer he wants, there’s a meltdown. We had five or six of them today, in between naps and snacks and games and all the rest.”

“Bless you, dear,” Aziraphale said, returning to the kitchen (which was all of four steps away, as the cottage was just one big room) for cups and saucers.

Ashtoreth wrinkled her generous nose and snarled up one side of her lip. “You take that back,” she muttered, but Aziraphale just smiled, bemused, as he set a cup down in front of her and took one for himself. 

He asked, “It’s going well, then, the infernal influencing?”

“Well enough. He used Guilt spectacularly well on the cook this morning, convincing her to give him three biscuits before lunch.” She beamed with pride. “And he wants nothing to do with his father--his earthly father, that is--because he never sees the blasted man.”

“Congratulations,” Aziraphale said dryly. “I’ll have you know that he was very gentle, replanting geraniums with me this afternoon.

“You coddle them too much,” Ashtoreth sniffed. “I’ll be giving them a stern lecture on my way back to the house.”

“Please don’t be too hard on the dear things.” The tea had steeped for barely a full minute, yet when Aziraphale poured their cups full, it was somehow the perfect strength and color. He handed Ashtoreth’s to her, then added a generous helping of sugar and a splash of milk to his own. As he sipped, he noticed her rubbing her temple again with her free hand. “My dear, are you quite sure you’re all right?” He couldn’t help but wonder if there was something more going on than the usual nanny stressors.

“Fine, yes,” she said, getting a bit snippy. She dropped her hand from her head and took a sip of her tea. Then she looked up. “Have you got anything stronger?” she asked with a raise of one thin eyebrow.

Aziraphale lay a finger beside his nose and winked, then stood and went to the chest of drawers. From the top drawer, at the back, he pulled a clear glass bottle, and when he returned to the sofa with it, he poured a generous dollop of the golden liquid inside into Ashtoreth’s tea. He added a slightly smaller splash into his own cup and winced when he sipped the spiked tea. It wasn’t really to his liking, but he hated for Cro--Ashtoreth to drink alone. 

Through the pot of tea and plate of biscuits, they shared stories of Warlock, strategized, planned, and of course speculated extensively on the Plan, the Ineffable bloody Plan. As usual, they could come to no firm conclusion whatsoever. Somehow Aziraphale found himself adding a bit of whiskey to each cup of tea they drank, and by the time the pot was empty, the bottle was nearly empty as well.

Talk turned for a while to the bookshop Aziraphale had left behind. It was only six months ago that he finally found a temporary manager he felt he could trust, even if they were a mere mortal. For the first year and a half he’d been here as Brother Francis, “Francis” took frequent trips back to the city “to visit an ailing relative.” (Aziraphale said he got the idea from a book.) Actually he was opening the bookshop for an hour here and there while interviewing possible managerial candidates. At last, he’d found someone who he was quite certain would never actually sell a book, and the ailing relative suddenly croaked. With his week’s bereavement leave, he had himself a nice holiday by the sea with all of his favorite books, leaving a seethingly jealous Ashtoreth behind.

The last bit of whiskey went directly into their empty teacups, and Ashtoreth gulped hers in one. “Sorry,” she said, her hands going up to her hair. “D’you mind if I…” One pin came out, then another. A smooth round curl fell down to drape from her shoulder toward her collarbone, a fiery tendril that looked silk-soft.

Aziraphale tore his eyes away from it to meet Ashtoreth’s… well, spectacles. “Not at all, my dear,” he said, looking like a spellbound moth in front of a very pretty flame.

The next pin came out, and the next curl fell. After the following few pins were discarded on the table in the growing pile, Ashtoreth half-closed her eyes and gave a pleased little moan at the release of it, though her eyes flew wide open when Aziraphale’s teacup rattled so violently on its saucer she was worried it would crack. “All right?” she asked, once more raising that one eyebrow.

“Y-yes,” Aziraphale breathed, not even blinking. He set his empty cup and saucer on the table. A few moments more, and all her lovely copper hair was loose around her face. It wasn’t as long as he’d expected, really not much longer than it had been when Crowley first proposed this particular arrangement of looking after the Antichrist several years ago. 

The final straw was when Ashtoreth removed the round glasses from her face and Aziraphale saw her golden eyes for the first time in… probably, now he thought about it, years. Since they were drunk in the back of his bookshop, discussing the Antichrist and humans and… whales… The Sound of Music…. She looked every inch a mortal woman in this form, but for those demonic eyes. They were completely and utterly the eyes of his good old nemesis, Crowley. Or, in this case, Ashtoreth. They were one and the same. Looking at the yellow-golden shine of her eyes, Aziraphale gave a little shiver. It went thankfully unnoticed by Ashtoreth as she was now rubbing her eyes carefully with the pads of both index fingers, deliberately not smudging her mascara. “That’s better,” she said with a little sigh.

Aziraphale swallowed. This corporeal form did not have urges along the lines of, well of… of the… carnal pleasures, to put it one way. It wasn’t even equipped, physiologically speaking, with the right parts. But still, something about the shine of her hair, the pale length of her throat, and the glow of her eyes in the dim lighting… it did something to him. “You look lovely, my dear,” Aziraphale said softly, and he really, really meant it. 

Ashtoreth said nothing. She never did, when receiving compliments. Aziraphale knew she struggled with accepting any sort of kindness; she didn’t think she deserved it. The only time she didn’t snarl, or deny it, or argue against it, was when Aziraphale said such things and it was just the two of them alone. He could see her battle with herself even now, though, through the haze of whiskey and tiredness and, he thought, still a bit of a headache, willing her mouth to stay closed and not snap something sarcastic and biting. After a moment, she cleared her throat and gathered all the strands of her hair over one shoulder, smoothing the curls together into graceful waves.

“You know, I rather like this form of yours,” Aziraphale went on, even though he knew he shouldn’t. He knew at some point, Ashtoreth would get fed up with too much kindness, snap some excuse, and flee back to the big house. But he could hardly help himself. His head was also swimming a bit with the whiskey, and he was warm and comfortable, and she looked so… just so pretty. She needed a bit of kindness now and then. “It took me a while to get used to it, but now it seems as much ‘you’ as your other forms.”

“I rather like it myself,” Ashtoreth said, surprising Aziraphale a bit. But then, she did reinvent herself a bit every decade or so anyway: hair shorter or longer, mustache, muttonchops, different styles of clothing, different decor in whatever flat she occupied…. 

“Yes,” said Aziraphale, thinking along the same lines, “you always have liked a bit of a change now and then.”

She reached for the whiskey bottle, brought it up to the level of her eyes, and gave a bit of a pout with her thin lips when she saw it was empty. “Yes,” she said, sadly setting the bottle back down. Then, abruptly, “The tits took some adjustment.”

Had Aziraphale had anything in his mouth at that moment, he would have spat it out in a great spray. “P-pardon?”

“Well, they don’t serve any purpose. But they contribute to the proper silhouette, you know?” Aziraphale gave some vague noise of assent. “Bloody great hassle, though. Having them, but then keeping them caged up in a brassiere. Nasty things, one of your side’s, I believe.”

“I wouldn’t know,” said Aziraphale, faintly.

“And blast, but they’re sensitive! The slightest tap makes me want to keel over. Rather a nuisance, wrangling a bony little mortal lad day in and day out, let me tell you.”

Aziraphale found himself trying very hard not to look at the aforementioned, ah, bosom, though he was ridiculously aware of its existence now. He enjoyed the human female form as much as the next angel. And the human male form, come to think of it. All Her creations were beautifully and wonderfully made, from the tiniest sparrow to the largest humpback whale. But until tonight, he hadn’t really thought of Ashtoreth as… female. Or human. It was just his old wily adversary, Crowley, in a slightly different shape and with a slightly different voice, crisper and yet softer at the same time. Throughout his centuries on Earth, he had occasionally indulged in those carnal pleasures the humans were so fond of. Just because he ordinarily lacked the proper equipment didn’t mean he couldn’t summon it up when it was required.

But… but this was Ashtoreth. Not a human he could woo and love and then quietly leave behind. This was Ashtoreth, a demon. His sworn enemy. 

“D’you mind?” Ashtoreth asked softly, snapping Aziraphale back to the present. He blinked, but before he realized what she was asking, he saw her reach behind her back with both hands. Something about the shape of her, underneath her blouse, changed, and it wasn’t until he saw her reach long fingers up the short, puffed sleeve of the blouse that he realized what she was doing. The strap of the brassiere came down over her arm, two fingers hooked in it, and she pulled it entirely over and off one arm, then did the same on the other side. That left the brassiere still inside her blouse, but she once more reached two slender fingers inside between two buttons in the front and pulled the whole thing out, giving a gentle tug to get the bulk of the fabric out. “Ahhh,” she sighed in a long, quiet breath as she dropped the thing on the sofa between them.

Aziraphale looked at it, his eyes wide, as though she’d just thrown an octopus or a flying squirrel or something equally as random and unusual on the cushion. “Er… may I…?” he asked. She gave a little flutter of one hand in assent, and he picked it up between finger and thumb.

The fabric was smooth, had a synthetic sort of satiny feel, and was an off-white color. It was still warm from her body, and Aziraphale felt the heat of blood rushing up his neck and into his cheeks, though he didn’t think too hard about why. 

“Horrid thing,” said Ashtoreth, sneering down her nose at it. 

“It doesn’t look so bad,” Aziraphale said, his eyes still on it.

“Feel just there,” she went on, pointing the part that would cup underneath her… Aziraphale could barely think it… breasts. He held it there between the fingers and thumb of his other hand, and his eyes widened even further.

“What is that? It’s… hard!”

“Wire,” she replied with a snarl. “Underwire, they call it, to ‘lift and separate.’ Say it’s for support.”

Without thinking, Aziraphale’s eyes went to the front of her blouse. He could see, oh stars, the slight tenting at the front of her white blouse from her darker nipples. But her breasts were small and didn’t sag much without the supposed support of the undergarment. “It doesn’t seem like yours need much support,” he said, then froze. He looked up at her face, horrified. “I didn’t mean--that is to say, I--I only meant….”

Ashtoreth just shrugged eloquently. “You’ve not insulted me, Angel. I know I have small tits, I wanted them that way. These poor human women with large ones, they have back troubles, they can’t get comfortable sleeping. Let alone the way the men stare at them.” The way he wrinkled his nose made it clear how he felt about that. “These are less trouble.”

Aziraphale realized he was still holding the brassiere. He dropped it back onto the sofa. “Perfectly understandable.” he said, and he clasped his hands in his lap. He felt her eyes on him and looked up to see her… well, if he didn’t know better, he would say she was sizing him up. “What?” he asked. Was something off? Something offensive about his appearance?

“Y’know…” she slurred. The whiskey really was getting to her, and he thought it so precious when her words wobbled like this. He couldn’t keep the smile off his face. “You’re always so buttoned up.” She narrowed her eyes, zeroing in on his bow tie. “I haven’t seen your throat since….” Closing her eyes, she tried to think. “Since, I don’t know, the fourteenth century, probably.”

“Well.” Aziraphale sat up straighter. “I just follow the fashions.”

“No, you don’t. Well, yes, you do,” she conceded, “generally, but this,” she flapped a hand up and down to indicate his entire outfit, “isn’t the fashion of today. You could be wearing t-shirts. They’ve had t-shirts for decades, awfully comfy things, but nooooo.” There was that wobbly voice. “You’ve got to be buttoned up to within an inch of your life.” Her gaze fell on his hands in his lap. “And your wrists. I haven’t seen your wrists in….” Both of her hands reached out for his. She grabbed them and turned his palms face-up. She let go of one hand, and it rested back in his lap. Aziraphale couldn’t breathe. With one hand under his, holding it in place, she encircled his right wrist with the fingers of her other hand and pushed gently, sliding up the sleeve of his shirt and jacket a few inches. There was the pale, thin skin, there were the lovely blue veins. “Beautifully and wonderfully made,” she murmured, looking down at them. 

Holding his hand in both her hands now, she curled her fingers up from beneath, the same two fingers that had hooked the strap of her brassiere down her arm, and rested them on those veins. “You seem so human,” she whispered. Aziraphale could feel the pulse of his heartbeat, light against the pads of her fingers. “We both do. Blood and bones and… eyeballs, entrails, skin, hair. Just like She made them. But we’re not. We’re not.”

Aziraphale had been looking, like her, down at their hands. Now he looked up to her face, saw her unguarded golden eyes filled with tears. “Oh, my dear,” he whispered. He reached up with his free hand to touch her cheek, but she saw the movement from the corner of her eye and jerked her head away, dropping his hand. 

With a loud sniff, she straightened her spine, lifted her chin, and reached for her glasses. “I should go. Early day tomorrow, like every day.” She stood and slid on the glasses in one smooth movement. She swayed slightly before finding her balance in the low heels she wore, then she shook her head, and Aziraphale could feel the schworp and pop in the air of the miracle she performed to sober up. “Good evening,” said that clipped Scottish voice.

“Ashtoreth,” he said, standing, but the coffee table was already between them, and by the time he’d come around it, she was through the door and it was closing.

Aziraphale sat back down. Next to him on the sofa was her white brassiere, cold now, and on the table by her empty tea cup with a hint of lipstick on the rim, was her pile of hair pins. Such human accoutrements, these little everyday items.

But she wasn’t human. And neither was he. He was a celestial being, and Ashtoreth was a fallen angel. He was sent here with a Divine Purpose, and she with an Infernal one. The apocalypse was nigh, and it was up to them to avert it. There was no time to linger over hair pins, lipstick, and sensitive wrist skin under shirt cuffs.

Aziraphale picked up the tea things and carried them to the sink. Tomorrow would bring them another day closer to the end of the world, and he had to focus on saving it.


End file.
